Tiger Woods’ successful comeback to the PGA Tour this year after the fourth of four back surgeries has popular LPGA player Natalie Gulbis believing she can overcome her own back issues that had the 35-year-old — like Woods — contemplating retirement from professional golf.
Indeed, following three procedures on her bad back, Gulbis has not only returned to the tour but at last week’s L.A. Open made her first cut in three years and is keeping a close eye on how Tiger is doing post-spinal fusion.
69-76-76-68. Good book end scores this week of the LA Open. Thank you to Wilshire and the @lpga_la team for pulling off an amazing first year event in a few short months. Thank you Vinny, my family and friends for trekking around the course this week!! pic.twitter.com/02OSFnTfYU
— Natalie Gulbis (@natalie_gulbis) April 22, 2018
“It’s been really inspiring to watch his success, not just in how he’s played but how much he’s played,” Gulbis told Golf Digest from Wilshire Country Club, where rounds of 69-76 earned her weekend tee times for the first time since the 2015 LPGA Classic. “His speed and how far he’s hitting it, it’s made me look at how much golf I could play. He’s played events that have sidehills and rough and I wasn’t sure if I could play those.”
“He’s been one of the best success stories in back injuries,” Gulbis, a veteran of three discectomies, said about Woods, who underwent three microdiscectomies and one lumbar fusion between March 2014 and April 2017.
If the two golfers’ trajectories, from patients whose aching backs threatened to end their careers prematurely to active competitors, sounds similar, that’s because they are.
Woods’ history of injuries to his back and almost every other part of his body is well-documented. Gulbis, with the 2007 Evian Masters her only tour victory, had her first back surgery in 2008, though the discectomy to relieve bulging discs did little to ease her pain.
“I struggled with getting re-injured,” Gulbis said. “I had to get cortizone shots. I was constantly in ice baths or getting physical therapy. I spent more time in physical therapy than practicing.”
Like Woods, who has detailed his inability to play with his kids or even get out of bed at times before his spinal fusion, Gulbis has described a less-than-satisfactory quality of life — a completely unacceptable status for someone in her 20s.
“At the end of 2009, my back doctor in Southern California had told me that I needed to retire because my back was done and … if I wanted to be able to rotate as an adult, with or without playing golf and just live a normal life, that I needed to cut back on the wear and tear that I was putting on [my back] by being a professional golfer,” Gulbis said on The Golf Podcast in 2015. “So I was planning my retirement and looking at all my options.”
A second surgery in 2010 went much better and Gulbis returned to professional golf without pain. Then came an awkward shot from a bad lie in a bunker during the 2017 ShopRite Classic — and a subsequent third discectomy.
“I was stuck sideways,” Gulbis told Golf Digest. “I was bent to the left. I thought I was gonna be done. My back got better just from taking time off. But at the end of the year — I knew I’d have surgery after Evian, just for quality of life.”
Gulbis has not shared war stories with Woods, who has had to curtail practice sessions and change his training regimen, though she can relate to his struggles and the need to adapt her work to what her body dictates.
@discoverLA @YogaWorks amazing yoga class!! #yogaworkshollywood pic.twitter.com/3OFcb7qMZe
— Natalie Gulbis (@natalie_gulbis) April 20, 2018
“There’s a lot of things I can’t do,” she said. “I can’t practice as much. I’ve never seen a range ball I didn’t want to hit, but now I have to have different discipline. My workouts are different. I have to be smarter.”
Gulbis noted back in 2015 that she knew of other LPGA golfers who have dealt with bad backs, Stacy Lewis, whose scoliosis was diagnosed when she was 11 and forced her to wear a back brace for seven-and-a half-years, a prime example. After all, as the saying goes, there are two types of golfers: those with bad backs and those who will have bad backs.
“There’s something like 80 percent of golfers spend some amount of time either working on their backs or have back injuries,” Gulbis, noting that golf requires a great deal of rotation in backs, hips, and knees, said on the podcast. “It’s really, really, really common for golfers to be associated with back pain and discomfort.”
Like Woods, Gulbis, with help from her coach Butch Harmon, has come up with an abbreviated schedule of events for the rest of 2018, eventually building up to starting back-to-back tournaments. And like Tiger, Gulbis, who viewed her T42 finish in Los Angeles as a personal victory, has one aim in mind.
“Win a tournament, that’s my only goal,” Gulbis told Golf Digest. “I love to compete, that’s the only reason I do it. It’s my only motivation.”